A portfolio approach to strategic hospital analysis: exposition and explanation.

Hospital planners rely on a number of graphic and quantitative devices to facilitate hospital strategic planning and each has its place. It is the comprehensive, user-friendly, environmental assessment models that are missing, however. This article seeks to remedy this condition through the introduction of a portfolio approach to strategic analysis. The authors review the analytical tools currently used by hospital planners to place this model in context and provide an exposition of the model and an explanation of how it is constructed and interpreted.